Remember the Titans

The real story: in 1971 Alexandria, Virginia, folded three high schools into T.C. Williams, and Herman Boone, hired two years earlier as a PE teacher and assistant coach, was named head coach of the combined football team. Boone had left a job in North Carolina in 1969 after being told the town "was not ready for a black head coach." Bill Yoast, who had coached Hammond High to a regional championship in 1969, took the defensive coordinator job under him. The team trained at Gettysburg College, went 13–0 with nine shutouts, won the state championship, and finished as national runner-up; that December, Richard Nixon was quoted saying the team had "saved the city of Alexandria."

The movie: Boaz Yakin directed Gregory Allen Howard's script for Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney, with Washington as Boone, Will Patton as Yoast, Wood Harris and Ryan Hurst as Julius Campbell and Gerry Bertier, Hayden Panettiere as Yoast's daughter Sheryl, Kip Pardue as "Sunshine," and a young Ryan Gosling and Kate Bosworth in the back rows. It was shot in Georgia. Released September 29, 2000, on a $30 million budget, it opened first with $21 million, then Washington's biggest opening, stayed in the top five for six weeks, and finished at $115.6 million domestic. Critics were lukewarm (72% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 48 on Metacritic; Roger Ebert praised the message and knocked the formula), but audiences gave it an A+ CinemaScore and the soundtrack went platinum. Trevor Rabin's "Titans Spirit" has closed NBC's Olympic coverage since 2002 and played at Barack Obama's 2008 election-night rally.

Most of the drama was invented. The schools had desegregated in 1959 and the opponents were already integrated, the 3 a.m. run and the Gettysburg speech never happened, the player Ray did not exist, and the nail-biting finale replaces a 27–0 shutout in the real state final. Bertier's paralyzing crash came after a banquet that December, not before the title game; he died in 1981 after winning a Paralympic gold medal in shot put. Boone was relieved of coaching in 1979 and spent the rest of his life as a speaker; he died in December 2019 at 84, seven months after Yoast died at 94.